


Heartbeat

by SpiritPhantasm



Category: Gintama
Genre: Drabble, Gen, mention of self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 12:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19173229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpiritPhantasm/pseuds/SpiritPhantasm
Summary: Most of the time, Shouyou forgot to make his heart beat.





	Heartbeat

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this for an RP audition and it turned out surprisingly good.

Most of the time, Shouyou forgot to make his heart beat.

The cave where he was once imprisoned for an indeterminate amount of time was a magnum opus of the villagers. Sealed with stones and mud, there was not even a crack to allow the smallest sliver of light, a preventative measure so the demon's curse don't leak out and stain the earth. Inside, the darkness was a living thing, writhing and suffocating the immortal who lived in the torture with no respite. 

He can't see. He can't hear. For the first time in his long live he was utterly, unbearably alone. Days passed, years passed, and the immortal who screamed in his prison until his throat bled and healed and bled again, who broke his finger clawing the unforgiving stones and cold wood, began to hurt himself with the sharp edges of the rocks. The burn of pain, fleeting as they were, reminded him of better days. Humans tortured him, killed him, hated him. But at least he was not alone.

In that prison, there was nothing but darkness.

So one day the immortal just...stopped. He stopped trying, stopped breathing, stopped living. Stopped his heart from beating.

It's not like he needed it to survive, after all. The Altana that birthed and cursed him wouldn't allow him to die so easily.

He simply sat on the hard-packed earth and felt himself splintering, shattering into a thousand tiny pieces under the burden of this excruciating torture. And that carried over to the hundreds of him that the immortal became, each bearing the scars of his torment. Shouyou was not excluded from the horrors that came with the memories. It haunted him, gripping his ankle like the dead that left their mark on the chinks on his blade, reminding him that he was a monster.

The only reason he ate was because Kotarou would get worried if he don't. He slept because Gintoki would bully him into the futon if he forgot. He breathed because Shinsuke liked to hug him with no warning. But Shouyou never had a reason to let his heart beat again. Until now.

 _Now_ , being all three of them snuggled together on top of him, curling into his unfailing body heat. _Now_ being Shinsuke having an ear pressed to his chest.

Putting up the charade of a human, Shouyou allowed his heart to beat once again after hundreds of years, lulling the children into a what he felt was a false sense of comfort. Because what security can be gained by lying defenseless before a monster?

And yet every thump filled him with warmth. It tingled his fingers, creating sensation of pinpricks on his toes, it caused heat to fill his head and his eyes and Shouyou was grateful that his children were asleep when the first tear fell from his eyes.

In the end he fell asleep as well, listening to the beat he hadn't heard for so long, beating for the children in his arms.

_Thump._

_Thump._


End file.
